Walter Jon Williams's Blog, page 245

Meet Mr Fusion

DARPA's attempt to produce a microchip-sized fusion reactor has dropped out of the budget. Chip-scale integration offers precise, micro actuators and high electric field generation at modest power levels that will enable several order of magnitude decreases in the volume needed to accelerate the ions. Furthermore, thermal isolation techniques will enable high efficiency beam to power converters,

Gaston's Phantom

I've seen most film adaptations of Phantom of the Opera, including the one in Chinese where the singer was a guy (The Phantom Lover, 1995), and I've seen no less than two musical theater adaptations, both of which sucked. So when I saw the original 1911 book by Gaston Leroux at the library, I picked it up out of curiosity. And d'you know what?All the adaptations are better than the original.

Now At Popular Prices!

Implied Spaces is now available in mass-market paperback!Y'all probably knew this already, but I didn't. I'm just the author.And, because I haven't nagged you for a while, I'll mention that you can pick up a copy of This Is Not a Game at the same time.

Kicking George

This weekend features the anniversary of the day we officially decided to kick King George out of town. In a decision largely unrelated to King George, Kathy and I are going to secluded mountaintop retreat for three nights.There may be internet. There may not be. There may be internet but I may not decide to make use of it. Which is by way of saying, I'll probably check you all next week.

Them!

A giant ant colony has taken over the world!The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination. What's more, people are unwittingly helping the mega-colony stick together.Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) were once native to South America. But people have unintentionally introduced the ants to all continents

Unique Opportunity

The writer Ian McDowell needs y'all's help. His father, who has just lost a leg, needs to move out of his apartment, where the manager refuses to install modifications to aid the handicapped. (This is legal, apparently.)Ian is raising money by offering a unique item for sale on eBay, a one-of-a-kind hand-written collection featuring original, never-published stories by Neil Gaiman, Kelly Link,

Reviews Too Late: Legend of the Shadowless Sword

The lineage of this film is a little unusual: it's a 2005 Korean production with Korean actors, the stunt team is from Hong Kong, the movie was filmed in China, and the screenwriter is someone named Paul Sheen, who has no other credits that I can find. It's no surprise, therefore, that the result is something of a mishmash. It's not bad, in fact the movie's a lot of fun in a no-holds-barred,

Goldman Sucks

I admire a brilliant piece of invective as well as the next guy, and the best I've seen in a long time is Matt Taibi's evisceration of Goldman Sachs, which he blames for both the creation, and the collapse, of every financial bubble of the last century. (Wow! Talk about evil!)The bank's unprecedented reach and power have enabled it to turn all of America into a giant pump-and-dump scam,

Charlie, Dunked

Here is our cat Charlie shortly after the catastrophe. It looks like he got totally immersed in water, or had a bucket of water thrown over him, or maybe got sprayed with a hose. I don't know exactly what happened, I wasn't there. I only know that I came home and there he was, on the front porch, looking bedraggled. I suspect that I, or more likely my personal property, will somehow pay for

Reviews Too Late: The Assassination of Jesse James

This may be one of a very few films ever to be doomed by excessive devotion to its literary source material. (Watchmen might be another.) The full title, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, isn't the sort of name that Hollywood gives to its films: it's taken from the the Ron Hansen novel upon which the film is based. I read the novel when it came out and it's terrific.